EricYou never surprise me...Look at the amount of knowledge you gained from twisted metal....that what started out being a twisted piece of metal and a fed up Eric in actual fact turned out telling you about ink flows..in ways that would never be indicative or conclusive from smooth head operation alone...you now know why things work and dont work for the first time......You are learning more from the rough than the smooth...... You will probably end up being a forensic scientist in no time...

Are you completely against pulling ink backwards through the head or is it just pushing ink forward thats a no go...need to know before i photoflo into the unknown.......i am definitely going to drip feed with an elephant syringe....but will i power syringe backwards after the drip session....what do you think ?ThanksMatt

Eric, I have a question on that first image of the chamber and pieces.It appears that the ends of the channels are balled up. is that just balls of ink at the broken edges, or is it what I am thinking as actually melted metal, same as the ends of a light bulb filament when it blows out due to burning not breaking?

If it those edges are melted, then they were fried before you did the ultrasonic, and the ultrasonic simply broke the already damaged parts apart and left scattered pieces within the chambers!David

davidh202, I combed over the images again this morning - looking specifically for balled over chamber wall ends. I find only hard edges, either of the original ends which are tapered actually, or of the broken edges. I actually have yet to find visible evidence of anything melting in these piezoboards.Blue moon, the only sucking that goes on in these machines comes from the pump and cap assembly. It builds negative pressure once sealed against the face of the head, then sucks ink through the face of the head in the direction that ink flows during printing. I see warning signs surrounding the idea of creating negative pressure "artificially" against the face of these heads, and sucking ink (or cleaner) out manually. One of the most sensitive parts of these heads is the bond between the printhead face and the top of the piezoboard. I don't plan on jeopardizing that. I've done enough jeopardizing...

This just in from the Juggler about his 11880. Epson tells him they won't sell him the replacement steel carriage drive belt. They directed him to nationalparts.com, who have the part listed on their website. Nationalparts tells him it's out of stock, he has to pay for it fully before they'll check with Epson to see if/when they can get it. "Could take weeks."

I feel bad for our friend the Juggler, he can't wait a month he's got jobs to do, so it's back to Decision1 for him. They just left his place with 3 grand a few months ago. You might think during a service call they'd lube his rails too. What the hell they replaced his pump and cap for no apparent reason.

Oh and Decision1 told him they plan to change his pump and cap assembly again when they come to install his drive belt, and that they'd bring a new head just in case. WTF does an X900 pump and cap assembly have to do with a broken drive belt?

I feel bad for our friend the Juggler, he can't wait a month he's got jobs to do, so it's back to Decision1 for him. They just left his place with 3 grand a few months ago. You might think during a service call they'd lube his rails too. What the hell they replaced his pump and cap for no apparent reason.

Oh and Decision1 told him they plan to change his pump and cap assembly again when they come to install his drive belt, and that they'd bring a new head just in case. WTF does an X900 pump and cap assembly have to do with a broken drive belt?There has GOT to be a better way.

That's a total load of horse pucky as Sherman T Potter used to say!Did he try Compass Micro in Oregon? 503-408-8725appears to be same 524 part # on their diagram on page 3 if I am reading correctly. http://www.compassmicro.com/files/SPro%2011880%20exploded%20diag.pdfthese guys may not stock all parts but order on an as needed basis from Epson .

GuysIf you want i can get it posted to me in ireland and express it out to the states....delighted to help...Also a great london epson parts supplier isUNICOMP LTDBOURNE ESTATEBOROUGH GREENKENT TN 15 DGUKTEL. + 44 (0)1732 781400 Fax. +44(0) 1732 780643Email sales@unicomp.co.ukWeb. Www.unicomp.co.ukThey are OFFICIAL epson part suppliers for the British Isles......They will definitely post to me. Ok?Matthew DeeganCloonederowenMoyardCo.GalwayIreland...353 87 2583833353 56 7721781mattdeegan@eircom.net

Glad if i can be of any help for Germany or the Uk....good luck...ThanksMatt

Glad you read it too...As you know, this thesis is about piezo technology in general and has no direct connection with epson printers..Did you pick up in the thesis that photographs have been captured showing air bubbles being recycled backwards into the head nozzles to no doubt cause obstruction and trouble in due course...And of course we as printers got some of the blame for dirty print heads which is a a breeding ground for air bubbles ( these scientists claim ) ......now a dirty print head wouldnt have anything to do with a dirty wiper blade would it ? Impossible .......

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it a great deal. I am also glad you got some value out of it. And I appreciate the terminology...it helps when I solicit my friends in engineering (for the town) to assist me in creating the solution.

I'm in a holding pattern right now, waiting for the "Red" cleaning solution from the link I found here. I ordered it a couple weeks ago and was informed because of chinese new year that the item would ship around Feb 27. 7 days from today. Another 10-14 in shipping. Strangely, I'm emotionally unavailable to gripe about things like that. Par for the course it seems (in relation to printer diagnostics).

On a brighter note, I skied Vail last week, pretty good skiing.

And thank you for what you contribute Matt. You offer great insight here. I appreciate being a part of this process.

I think we may have the Juggler covered. HAL stepped in and effectively hit the "delete bs" button.

Good point Erik Ulstad, Matt's been contributing a lot of good stuff here. You too with that pdf, but I gotta tell you reading stuff like that all the words melt together for me and spell the same thing page after page "You're a moron".

I do realize it's written in my native language but somehow I still need an interpreter.

I just got a message from Kip, who is one of the users that I rushed the printhead changing video for. He's been idle sitting by waiting to take on the challenge of a new head swap on his 7900. The manual was too elusive for him too apparently, so he decided to wait for the video. Kip is drunk tonight. He's eyebrow deep in whiskey, celebrating his first 100% clear nozzle pattern in far too long. Kip says he barely used the manual at all, instead he followed the video.

I just got a message from Kip, who is one of the users that I rushed the printhead changing video for. He's been idle sitting by waiting to take on the challenge of a new head swap on his 7900. The manual was too elusive for him too apparently, so he decided to wait for the video. Kip is drunk tonight. He's eyebrow deep in whiskey, celebrating his first 100% clear nozzle pattern in far too long. Kip says he barely used the manual at all, instead he followed the video.

How cool is that..

This is NOT for Eric but the rest of us ...I am probably way out of line but what would you think of setting up a BUST UP fund (separate to the video fund ) for Erics use that would allow him to cover the cost of bust up heads and inks etc. He could then proceed to destroy heads and inks in a predictable way on a long term basis,so that at the end of it, he would be able to tell us x minutes on a drip y minutes on a syringe and z minutes soaking in the bath.....whatever...we have seen a lot of dollars lost here on time out ,inks ,heads ,dampers ,park stations ,rips etc...because we have had to guess our way along the route..Eric is showing us how to do things on his own very valuable time...and there is no doubt in my mind and i know you will agree that each of his ideas and experiments is notching all of us to a different place......I hope that i am not a million miles off the mark......

If we all put a little towards the project it will yield huge dividends for all of us.....Any takers ?

That is very thoughtful of you Matt. Maybe not necessary though, at least in that form.

It was suggested more than once that we corral all the vital lessons learned in this thread and put them into one organized place for both ourselves, and for future fellow X900 users also facing the special challenges of (successfully) owning/running/maintaining these machines. The idea makes a lot of sense, there are far too many pages in this thread to effectively find what you need. So I created MYX900.com. It's a slow build but already I've been contacted by people who have benefited greatly from it - like in excess of thousands of dollars benefited from it. While this is inspiring to me, inspiration alone won't keep MYX900.com running or building or helping people.

Like I mentioned many pages ago, I am indeed a dreamer. I do it all the time. The current dream here is that this effort supports itself, through donations. I haven't had a safe/easy system in place to accept donations until today, but it's up and running now. It's under the "FERTILIZER" tab. The page is called "MANURE REQUESTED". I am hopeful that people who benefit from the effort will contribute to the effort. I've paid for all this up until now with my framing hammer. If we do this different from now on, together, MYX900.com will pay for itself.

This has been a great experience. I thank all of you, even those who stay quiet in the background, sincerely for your help.

It took my hammer hitting me in the head this afternoon for me to realize I was wrong to say I've paid for this entirely with my framing hammer. In fact many of you have already donated to the cause, after the wiper exchange video. Time to put a thank you page together. Sorry I neglected to acknowledge that in the previous post. What a jerk.

What do you think of the photoflo concentration in my attempt as follows ...ps. .i am in no way going to hold you responsible for any destruction that i can manage...i am already set to install a new head ( its 250 dollars for the 7800 if i blow the current one to bits )

# 2. I read somewhere this week that bacterias love to eat glycols...you may be able to confirm that......anyway i thought i would then go back to your original recommendation to include isopropyl in the mix as i believe it likes to eat bacterias !